Boom, it worked!
MYOS is right - I don’t think you have to wait all the way until May 1. I’d ask next week and see what they say. They may ask you to wait until after May 1 when they get final decisions, but lots of people decide earlier than May 1, and making your intentions known early is a good idea.
Yes, unless the “full amount” is some amount of money that’s reasonable to repay. Some people would peg this aorund the $31,000 that the federal government will lend students without a co-signer. I say that the amount probably lies somewhere between $30K and $60K, and depends on a variety of factors, but I would heavily discourage any student from borrowing more than around $30-40K.
I don’t think that decision should be tied to major and average first salary, though. College students change their majors all the time - there are lots of students who go in thinking they’re going to be engineering majors and end up majoring in something else; or students who start off pre-med or pre-law thinking they’ll make a ton of money and end up doing something else completely. And even when students do major in fields that correspond to relatively high paying careers, having a lot of debt hamstrings their choices. A computer science major may do TFA for a few years and fall in love with teaching; a pre-med student may take a few years to do research and realize they’d rather become a researcher; an economics major decide to work at nonprofits instead of on Wall Street.
No. In fact, if a student had absolutely no choice but to borrow the full amount for an expensive private college (which is rare), then Spelman would be an excellent place to go. I’m commenting on the far more frequent choice of borrowing $175K to go to Spelman vs. borrowing a smaller amount of money (or none at all) to go to a different school, or attending a community college for a few years before transferring, or some other lower-cost option.